UK PM CAMERON HAS NO POLICY ON GAZA, BUT SERVES ZIONIST ISRAELIS WELL
UNITED KINGDOM PM DAVID CAMERON HAS NO POLICY ON GAZA (PALESTINE), BUT SERVES ZIONIST ISRAELIS’ BENYAMIN NETANYHU WELL
by Syarif Hidayat*
British Prime Minister David Cameron has come under fresh pressure over his stance toward Israeli occupation regime aggression against the Palestinians living in the besieged Gaza Strip. In a shock resignation, Britain’s first Muslim cabinet member, Baroness Warsi, quit over the government’s stance on Gaza. The high profile politician says she can no longer support David Cameron’s policies.
The trifling objection is that the Government has no policy on Gaza. Until now, David Cameron’s solitary concern about the slaughter of innocents has appeared to be avoiding giving offence to Benyamin Netanyahu and his administration. That is not a policy. It is the cowardly abrogation of moral duty.
Deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg called for the suspension of arms export licenses to Israel, saying that Tel Aviv had “overstepped the mark” in its deadly attacks on Gaza. Clegg added that he had been working to get the suspension finalized along with his Liberal Democrats colleague and Business Secretary Vince Cable. Cable said they had not yet managed to reach an agreement with Tory coalition partners. An announcement on the matter is expected be made shortly.
According to an unnamed Downing Street spokesman, a review of export licenses to Israel was underway. Labour leader Ed Miliband has also criticized the British premier for not being vocal about Israel’s atrocities.
Also, on Tuesday, August 5, 2014, Sayeeda Warsi, British Foreign Office minister and the first Muslim to sit in the UK cabinet, resigned over what she called the government’s “morally indefensible” policy on Gaza.
Following Warsi’s resignation, several Conservative MPs voiced concern over Israel’s attacks on Gazans. Tel Aviv’s onslaught against the coastal enclave has drawn widespread international condemnation. Israeli forces have killed about 1,900 people, including some 400 children, and have injured over 9,500 others since July 8.
A three-day truce that took effect at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) on August 5 is currently in place. The Israeli attacks on Gaza’s population of over 1.8 million have worsened the already dire humanitarian situation in the blockaded coastal enclave.
First British Muslim minister quits over stance on Gaza
In a shock resignation, Britain’s first Muslim cabinet member, Baroness Warsi, quit over the government’s stance on Gaza. The high profile politician says she can no longer support David Cameron’s policies. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi was made a life peer in the house of lords in 2007. She’s been chairman of the conservative party, the first muslim minister to serve in a British cabinet, and until Tuesday morning was senior minister of state for foreign affairs.
Warsi – who was also minister for faith and communities – has quit over the government’s stance on Gaza. In her resignation letter she called the government policy “morally indefensible.” As the minister responsible for the UN, the International criminal court and human rights, she said Britain’s stance didn’t show a commitment to the rule of law. It’s a serious – and high profile – blow.
The government has been slammed from all sides, for its muted response to Israel’s actions in Gaza. Actions the UN has called “criminal”. The French “massacres” even the US has called “totally indefensible”. But David Cameron has dragged his heels. Although many will say the resignation of Warsi, and criticism from other politicians, is far too little, far too late. Warsi is now calling for a complete halt of Britain’s £8 billion worth of arms exports to Israel. Just before her resignation the government said it is reviewing the sales but will NOT stop the supply. Action seems a far way off, when even verbal condemnation is hard to come by.
Sayeeda Warsi, a British Foreign Office minister and the first Muslim to sit in the UK cabinet, has resigned over the UK government’s policy on Gaza.
Warsi wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that, “With deep regret I have this morning written to the Prime Minister (David Cameron) & tendered my resignation. I can no longer support Govt policy on #Gaza.” Warsi is the first minister to resign on principle from the British government since the coalition was formed between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats in 2010.
This comes as Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government has drawn criticism, including from the main opposition Labour Party, for not taking a tougher line against Israel over its military attacks on Gaza. On August 3, Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband criticized Cameron for failing to take a firm stance on Israel’s aggression against Gaza, saying the prime minister had failed to speak out about the Israeli atrocities.
In addition, the British government recently came under fire after reports showed that the Israeli regime has been using weapons containing British-made components in the fatal aggression against the Gaza Strip. According to British media, arms export licenses worth $70 million have been granted to 130 British defense manufacturers since 2010 to sell military equipment to Tel Aviv.
The Israeli military launched its recent offensive against the Gaza Strip on July 8. At least 1,867 Palestinians, including around 430 children, have so far been killed and over 9,500 others injured during the onslaught. Tel Aviv says 64 Israelis have been killed in the war, while Hamas puts the number at more than 150.
‘Sayeeda Warsi right to resign over Gaza’
The past month has seen the continuation of Israeli air strikes and ground raids in Gaza, along with repeated rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel. These are appalling and inexcusable acts of violence on both sides.
With more than 1,800 confirmed dead – one in four of them reportedly children – and more than 9,000 injured, the conflict is causing unimaginable suffering for the innocent. This week saw the shelling near a third UN school housing displaced civilians in Gaza. As a husband and father, watching the news has become unbearable.
At times like this, it is everyone’s responsibility to do what we can to stop the suffering. For thousands of ordinary Britons this has meant donating millions of pounds to the many charities helping those in desperate need in Gaza. The generosity of my constituents in Tooting, and people across Britain, has been truly inspiring. Our political leaders have an even greater responsibility: to stand up and say what is right and to use every means at its disposal to put pressure on both sides to cease the slaughter.
Yet the British government’s lack of leadership on the catastrophe in Gaza has been appalling. David Cameron has been silent while the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza have led to death, suffering and hardship. His and other ministers’ failure to criticize Israel directly is startling.
By contrast, the Labour party has repeatedly condemned the escalation of violence and the ground invasion into Gaza by Israel. Ed Miliband has said that the prime minister is “wrong not to have opposed Israel’s incursion into Gaza” – and that Cameron’s inability to acknowledge the killing of hundreds of innocent civilians is inexplicable to people across Britain and internationally.
On Tuesday Sayeeda Warsi resigned as Foreign Office minister, saying the government’s response to the situation in Gaza had been “morally indefensible … not in Britain’s national interest and will have a long-term detrimental impact on our reputation”. I haven’t always agreed with Lady Warsi, but I think her decision to make a stand on this issue and speak up for the British public is genuinely courageous.
Like Warsi, I want the government to be much clearer to both sides about the unacceptability of its actions. With the current, tentative ceasefire in place, it is more important than ever that we see principled and consistent leadership from our government. As Ed Miliband has said, British ministers must work with the international community to re-establish meaningful negotiations to achieve a two-state solution.
And Warsi must be listened to when she says, “our response to [Gaza] is becoming a basis for radicalization that could have consequences for us for years to come”. The government’s failure to criticize Israel’s incursion is not just a moral failure – it goes directly against Britain’s interests in the world and risks making our citizens less safe as a result.
What is particularly galling about the government’s position is that it is the exact opposite of what David Cameron has said in the past. In 2006, when almost 1,000 people died during Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon, he was quick to condemn Israel’s actions. Why will he not to do so now? What has changed?
Warsi has done a brave thing in speaking out, and her resignation will be a big loss to David Cameron’s overwhelmingly male, white, wealthy and privately educated cabinet. I sincerely hope that the prime minister reflects on Warsi’s resignation, and when it comes to the crisis in Gaza, change his approach.
‘Moral sense behind UK’s Warsi departure’
The ministerial resignation on a point of purest principle is a rare and precious thing. Most are forcibly resigned, some leave out of exhaustion or to spend more time with money-making ambitions, but not since Robin Cook in 2003, shortly before the invasion of Iraq, has a significant minister walked out for no other reason than the inability to stomach what her Prime Minister is doing – or in this case, not doing – in his or her name.
With Sayeeda Warsi’s resignation as a senior Foreign Officer minister in the Lords, my only problem – and it is absurdly pedantic – is with how she styled her reasoning in the tweet that announced it. “With deep regret I have this morning written to the Prime Minister,” Lady Warsi wrote, “& tendered my resignation. I can no longer support Govt policy on #Gaza”.
The trifling objection is that the Government has no policy on Gaza. Until now, David Cameron’s solitary concern about the slaughter of innocents has appeared to be avoiding giving offence to Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration. That is not a policy. It is the cowardly abrogation of moral duty.
Others will find more in the departure of Britain’s first Muslim cabinet member about which to object than that. Those, like Melanie Phillips, who are patholigically driven to conflate heartfelt sympathy for the plight of Palestinians with hatred of Jews, will interpret it as sourced in anti-Semitism. One trusts she will treat that brand of slanderous idiocy with the cool disdain it demands.
In an earlier tweet, Warsi expressed the feelings she shares with so many of us – Muslims, Christians, Hindus, atheists, Jews such as myself. “Can people stop trying to justify the killing of children,” she wrote. “Whatever our politics there can never be justification, surely only regret.”
You would naively have hoped that this is far too obvious to state, but while philosophically there may [be] no such entity as a moral absolute, in real terms the indiscriminate killing of children – whatever the provocation of Hamas – is absolutely immoral. Whatever Lady Warsi’s religion, I assume that she felt compelled to act as she did not because she is a Muslim, but because she is a human being. It would profoundly trivialise and degrade her resignation to view it through the prism of tribal loyalty.
The loss of someone who ticked so many valuable boxes for the Tories – female, dark-skinned, Muslim, working class background in the industrial north west – will be a blow to Mr. Cameron. Yet to analyze it in cynical psychological terms feels venal in the light of the darkness that drove her to sacrifice her career. In that same comparative sense, it would be cheap to describe it as a personal tragedy.
But it is sad that she had to go, and sadder still that Mr. Cameron still cannot bring himself to say that what Israel is doing in the name of “Never again” is insupportably wrong. And it is perhaps a greater sadness that there are so few British politicians with the decency, courage and moral sense which Lady Warsi showed yesterday in speaking from the heart, on behalf of many millions, to tell her Prime Minister of his craven silence, “Not in my name.” (T/E01/IR)
Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)
*Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA).
He can be contacted via emails: [email protected] and [email protected])
Sources:
1. http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/
2. http://www.presstv.com/
3. http://www.presstv.ir/
